LAUSR

Positive outlooks for banks, eCommerce and seeds The tone for 2016 was quite upbeat at our Banking & Financial Services Conference this week, with many bank management teams confident about delivering revenue growth and positive operating leverage next year – without the help of rising rates. In the global eCommerce outlook, Justin Post and our internet analyst team estimate sales will grow at a 22% compound annual growth rate for 2016-2018. China, which is the largest eCommerce market, is the biggest driver of our sales growth estimate. In the US, we expect eCommerce to continue to take share from traditional retail, reaching 12% by 2018 from 8% in 2014. Post also notes the big are getting bigger, as he estimates Amazon (AMZN) will have a 33% share in the US in 2015 (up from 29% in 2014) and capture more than 66% of incremental eCommerce spend. Analyst Steve Byrne published a deep dive report on gene editing, a technology he believes will be transformative in agriculture, with huge potential for the big seed companies. This technology is a game changer versus the conventional approach to modifying plant genes